what’s for dinner???

Today is Works-For-Me-Wednesday in reverse, which translates into Works-For-YOU-Wednesday.

Menu planning. How do you do it? Seriously, I want to know.

This is a project that I have been wanting to tackle for weeks, but I’m not sure which way to go about it. I have seasons of menu planning, but I’ve never found a method that I can stick to.

I love cooking. I even enjoy grocery shopping. Remember I have one child, and she also enjoys grocery shopping. However, I do not like planning out what we are going to eat days in advance. I have enough trouble coming up with a plan for that evening.

Far to often 4:00 rolls around and I realize that in one hour HungryMan is going to walk through the front door and I haven’t a clue as to what I’m going to feed him before he faints from hunger. At 4:15, I’ve settled on a meal, but realize that I’m missing two or three ingredients. I scoop up Ava and her three purses and dash out the door. We race in and out of the grocery store, and arrive panting at my front door thirty minutes later. I carry up the groceries praying with each step that HungryMan will be delayed in traffic so that I can finish this meal before he arrives. And somehow more nights than not, dinner is ten minutes away from the table when his car pulls up.

While my frenzied method succeeds in feeding my family. Daily grocery shopping and hectic cooking doesn’t appear to be the most effective or efficient way to go about things. That’s where you come in.

How do you do it?

When do you plan your meals? How far out to do you plan them? Do you have a rotating menu or do you come up with new menus each week? Do you shop by sales and seasons? Do you keep a pantry stocked with standard fare and come up the meals on the fly?

Please share you secrets! I have three hours before HungryMan arrives famished and dizzy. And no one wants HungryMan to faint. Believe me, he has a long way to fall.

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17 Responses

Here is the answer to your prayers. And you can thank me later. Although I, personally, cannot stick to this plan, my sister-in-law is gorilla glued to it and her family LOVES it. It’s called emealz. Go to http://www.e-mealz.com/. It’s no a free service. It’s $15/3 months, I think. All you do is subscribe and pay. Then you pick how many mouths you will be feeding and if there are any dieting requirements. Next you will sign in to your account where there will be 5 (or 7) already planned out meals. And these are very easy to prepare meals. It gives you everything. Recipes. Grocery lists, organzied by aisle and based on the sales at the store you choose. What to do with leftovers. It’s great. Wish I could have stuck to it. Just go check out their site. I think it would be worth your time. Good Luck!!

I am not a “menu planner” either, Rachel. I couldn’t possibly write “Spaghetti” on Friday because, how do I know I’m going to feel like Spaghetti on Friday? I am a big, “I feel like… (fill in the blank) tonight” kind of meal planner.

But I AM a grocery list shopper. As well as my write-stuff down-on-the-fly-we’re-out-of-brown-sugar-kind-of-lists, I sit down before I go to the store with my recipes and pick 3 or 4 meals, and make my list.

I menu plan often, but not always. I have a well-stocked pantry and fridge and can usually throw something together. But even if I don’t have anything specific planned for the week, there are a few things I do:
1. Prep any meat as much as you can when you get them. I clean and trim any chicken I buy into several categories: cutlets, nuggets or ‘fingers.’ (We aren’t too big on bone-in chicken, except roasts. I buy the chicken on sale and stock the freezer.)
I try to brown my ground beef and pack it in the size I need for a meal. Remember, if you store the beef in a plastic zipper bag, you can smash it as flat as possible for better storage!
As far as steaks, I sometimes freeze them in baggies right along with their marinades.
Or I cut them up in pieces for either meat sauce, or stroganoff.

If you don’t do anything except prep your meat ahead of time, that will save you time in the kitchen. A package of already-browned ground beef mixed with your favorite sauce is quick for spaghetti!

2. Don’t forget to do the same with your vegetables, too. It’s just as easy to chop up a bunch of onions, peppers, celery, carrots, and more at one time than to do it over four different days. Peppers and onions freeze nicely. I don’t know about carrots. As far as celery, I chop off the ends (to save for soup stock), wash them and either store them in ‘Green Bags’ (yes, they work) or wrapped tightly in foil. They last a long time this way.
BTW, never prep berries ahead of time. They get all yucky.

3. Keep a supply of favorite staples in your house–pasta, chicken broth, canned tomatoes, anything you use on a regular basis. Watch for sales and stock up.

Oh, and as far as menu planning? Just because you write “Chili” on Monday doesn’t mean you have to eat it that day! I was planning on a Mexican casserole tonight and (like a dope) forgot a big ingredient–cheese! No problem, because every Saturday I take meat from the freezer for at least three meals. I have a roast beef thawed out, which we will have with fries (I’m cheating–they’re store bought), corn and salad. Easy-peasy!

I’ll share with you how I do it, though I realize this method may not work well for everyone (though its pretty similar to the comment above).

I’m single and live alone (except for the dogs), and though I often have people over for dinner, I don’t plan a meal for every night. Mostly because most recipes I use make enough for several meals, so on the other nights I either eat leftovers or one of the quick stand-by meals I also have ingredients on hand for.

When I menu plan, usually for one to two weeks depending on my schedule and my mood at the moment, I first plan for any special occasions – times when people are coming over for dinner, times when I need to provide food for a party or shower or something like that (it feels like I have a lot of those lately). Then, I plan 3-4 meals for the week, using a combination of the recipes that I love and new ones I want to try.

This way, each night when I need to start making dinner, I have the supplies for several options. So if I feel like something easy, I can do that, or if I’m in the mood to try something more complicated, I can do that.

I am an off and on planner. Right now I’m in an off season and we’re pretty much flying by the seat of our pants and somehow miraculously eating something every night. Tonight will be a challenge though b/c I used the last of the chicken last night.

When I do plan I usually pick 5-7 main dishes that we like and make a list. Then I pick from the list through out the week. There are weeks when I don’t feel like anything on the list on a certain night and just make something else from staples. Then I carry the meal over to the next week if I still have the ingredients or just don’t make it.

It’s nice when I suddenly realize that it’s almost dinner time and then I remember that I have a list to pick from.

Meal planning is not something I am good at either. Here recently I have started to try and post my menu plan on Monday’s, but after I post it I don’t stick to it. Some nights I am more tired than others. Some nights I have more time than others. I just never know. My plan now is to stockpile, and put all of my ingredients into supercook.com. This website is a wonderful website to where you enter all of your ingredients into it, and it spits out some recipies that you have all the ingredients for. Stockpiling saves money because you buy all of your ingredients when they are on sale, and you don’t have to run back and forth spending more of your gas money.

I’m a big believer in menu planning, as my mother was before me. I make a menu every 10 days or so, and then I go grocery shopping based on the ingredients needed for those meals. (I often have to add in a small grocery trip in the middle of the menu to pick up eggs, milk and fresh fruit.)

Sometimes, I assign meals to certain days in the future. For example, if I know my brother is coming for dinner Sunday night, I’ll be sure to plan a meal I know will feed him. (He’s 26 – another Hungry Man.) But usually, I just plan a variety of meals and decide what to have for dinner that night when I wake up in the morning.

A couple of other tips that have helped me: I save my menus from past years with the month on top, so I can look back and see what I was having this time last year and draw fresh inspiration. (Each season has its own menu, in my world.) I also strive to always have at least one or two new meals on each menu. (“Everyday Food” is a favorite source for fresh recipes.) It keeps me interested in cooking (which I love) and keeps my husband guessing.

My organization of menu planning ebbs and flows and I hate coming up with meals too. Right now we are eating tomatoes and corn on the cob and cucumber salad all of the time because it’s never better than right now. I go to the farmers market and buy whatever looks good.

BUT, when I’m in my usual state, one thing that I found helpful is that I have three “regular” meals every week. One is soup and bread (the bread from Turtle Bread which we eat with smoked gouda from Trader Joe’s) along with some homemade soup. That’s usually our Sunday night meal so we eat leftovers during the work week.

I’m SO not a type-A person, but after far too many “4:00 and what’s for dinner?!” afternoons, I came up with a simple solution. I use a cheapo, magnetic weekly calendar dry-erase board (I got it for free at the DMV last year) and once a week I take 5 minutes to plot out dinners for the week. Then I make a grocery list of all the necessary ingredients, and one shopping trip later I’m set for the week.

It’s ridiculously simple, I don’t always make the most complex meals, and my “meal repertoire” is rather small (though always growing!), but it’s definitely worked for me. Now all I have to work on is making sure I remember to thaw the chicken overnight or start the crock-pot early enough in the day for dinner…those kinds of things I tend to forget. 🙂

Also, I usually try and plan meals that share at least 1 or 2 ingredients, so as not to buy ingredients that just end up going to waste. For example, I use tortillas and lettuce for both tacos and caesar chicken wraps, so I’ll usually plan to have both of those meals in the same week.

Also, I don’t know if lunch menus have been an issue for you, but my sister in law has a great method: rotating lunches on a weekly basis. (e.g. Mondays are pizza day, Tuesdays are macaroni and cheese, Wednesdays are pb & j, etc.). That way she always has the ingredients for lunch on hand, and she doesn’t have to stop every morning and think about what she’s going to serve her 4 girls. This is definitely something I plan on doing as my kids get bigger!

Oh yeah, I also try to make meals that I can double and that freeze well — Taco soup and chili are our favorites, especially in chilly weather. That way if I run into an unexpectedly crazy afternoon, I’ve got something ready to pop out of the freezer and heat up for dinner in a pinch.

I shop very very seasonally, both in a local store and at farmer’s markets. We’ve got fabulous ones out here.

I get a box of fruits and veggies from our CSA every Saturday from June through September.

We buy some meat on the weekends and I make one or two or dishes on a weekend day (cook for a day-eat for a week concept). I rarely follow recipes word-for-word. I get inspired by them, but then go off on my own tangents!

We eat leftovers pretty much all week long. Except I will prepare new veg on a daily basis.

I soak my own dry beans overnight or for a few days and then cook a huge pot of them. We turn them into whatever. A soup. A salad topping. A main course with avocado and garlic or something. I have lentils, mung beans, pintos, or red beans on hand to make into a dish or two weekly.

Things that turn over quickly that I get on an as-needed basis: whole chickens, wild salmon, bulk turkey breakfast sausage, fresh fruits, veg. Occasionally other protein sources like tofu or edamame, lamb, or cheese.

I plan a monthly dinner calendar, so at the end of very month, I will plan all dinners and side dishes for the next month. I then go to the grocery store once a week at the beginning of the week and pick up everything I need for that week’s meals. Then sometimes if I come upon a day where I don’t feel like what’s on the menu, I have the items for all the other dinners that same week, so I can just swap them around. But that’s just what works for me!!

You don’t have to plan what night you will serve a certain meal. But what you can do is plan 7 meals for the week, keep in mind any nights that might be hard and make sure you have easy meals for that night. For example:

Now if you know that your child has soccer practice on Thursday at 6:30 it is not a good idea to cook a meal that takes an hour to cook. That would be a good night for:
pizza/salad or grilled cheese/soup. But if on Tuesday you want Stake you don’t feel pressured to cook the chicken you had written on that day.
You will be amazed at the time, money and stress you will save!

I pretty much follow Nikki’s plan. Before grocery shopping I plan out my meals and then buy everything for the week at once. I have found though, that it is wise to only plan about 4 meals/wk. It just seems that leftovers, pizza, and unplanned outings always creep up on us and if I do need to cook another meal, I just do something simple from pantry staples. I have also found it helpful to keep a list of go-to recipes. When something is easy and a big success, I write it on a list so when I am planning for the week and not feeling any inspiration, I can just pick a couple of meals from the list and I know that they will be well received. Good luck!

Have you ever heard of Everyday Food by Martha Stewart? Well, it’s a little cookbook/meal planner at the check out in the grocery store. I just got a year subscription after buying it several times. It has very easy recipes, a great variety, healthy choices, and best of all, a list of everything you need to take to the store with you. On the list it has ingredients to make every recipe in the whole cookbook. I have just found that the new recipes makes me excited to cook and it’s just so easy. Also, with the list in the back of the book, you never can say you dont have an ingredient. Good luck!!